Does adding images to a post contribute to site slowness?

  • Hey everyone,

    I have a very specific (but possibly dumb) question about how to incorporate images into my site pages. For the past year, I have been building a very image-intensive portfolio website, and have my own Virtual Private Server through Network Solutions.

    On my site, I have a custom toy portfolio that uses the NextGen gallery format to import anywhere from 3-12 images into each page, depending on the amount of photos I want to show for each project. As of roughly 2 months ago, there might have been roughly 3000 images across the 300 various entries, and my site still loaded lightning fast.

    Then, roughly 2 months ago, I started adding in content to my Paintings and Illustration portfolios. Since these images needed a slightly different presentation than those of my toy work, I opted not to use the NextGen or Gallery option in the Dashboard, but rather to use the “Insert Image” option directly within the page entry itself. I’ve only added in a few hundred images across this new set of portfolio pieces, but I’ve noticed a ridiculous slow-down in the performance of my site.

    Is there any reason why adding in images directly through a Page post might slow down my site? Or could it be just another issues, such as a bad server or plug-in?

    I’m a little stumped as to why everything was working so great before, but now it’s taking forever to access each page.

    Any thoughts or suggestions would be great.

    Matt Cauley
    Iron-Cow Prod.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • Is there any reason why adding in images directly through a Page post might slow down my site?

    I don’t think so. I mean adding anything to a page is going to slow down the loading of that page, but I don’t think it should effect the site globally which is what it sounds is happening. We’ve got hundreds of images, most embedded directly into posts, and I don’t see any slowdown like you describe. I think it has to be something else.

    Do you happen to have usage statistics for the past few months? Google Analytics or something? Maybe you just became popular?

    Supplying a link always helps.

    My first guess is that you may be inserting images that look like they are 300×200 (or whatever), but the actual image file being loaded might be more like 3000×2000, which is then down-scaled by the browser.

    In Firefox, right click on an image and choose Image Properties to see if this might be happening. Another avenue of attack is to install Firebug into FF, go to the page in question, hit F12, click on the Net tab, and then do a Shift-Reload of the page. It will give you all sorts of interesting timing info on the page load.

    Thread Starter Iron-Cow

    (@iron-cow)

    Hey apljdi,

    Thanks for the reply… Unfortunately, I don’t have any usage statistics, since I didn’t want the site “live” yet. Basically, I am working on a revamp of https://www.ironcowprod.com using this link as a testing ground –> https://www.mattcauley.com

    Once I get the mattcauley.com site 100% finished and all the bugs worked out, I’ll transfer everything over to the ironcowprod domain.

    It’s possible that my host (Network Solutions) is perhaps not the best? I used to be thrilled with them, but I’ve heard increasing comments online about poor performance from them, including sluggishness. I have 512mb of RAM allocated to the server, but a friend who runs a different site has 4GB of RAM dedicated. So, perhaps it’s more a server thing, and not an image thing.

    Anyway, does any of this spark any other ideas? I’m about 85% complete with the site overhaul, but obviously want my site to load lightning fast for the official launch. Stumped…

    Thread Starter Iron-Cow

    (@iron-cow)

    hedronist – you’re absolutely right… Here’s a specific link on how I am currently handling the “big” images:

    https://www.mattcauley.com/paintings/big-heads-portrait-series/ed/

    There’s a 420×630 “preview” image within the post itself, and upon clicking, links to (in this case) an image that’s 1000×1518.

    The idea is since I have artwork of various shapes and sizes, I’ll insert the “preview” image at a consistent size in all the pages. Then, when it clicks larger, it can expand fullscreen on any browser and maintain clarity. (The 1000 width seemed to be a good fit on most screens and smartphones).

    That said, it’s not so much of the loading of images as it is an overall slowness clicking into the site, and then navigating the pages. Once I actually get to a page, all the functionality seems to work pretty quick.

    First, I’m not helping anymore until I get my downloadable TARDIS.

    Second, the site loads noticeably faster on Chrome than FireFox– remarkably fast, actually. If I remember right, Chrome’s Javascript interpreter is considerably faster than FF’s, which makes me think that maybe the issue is with the Javascript and the time it takes to execute those 17 JS files.

    Thread Starter Iron-Cow

    (@iron-cow)

    Huh! Interesting… let me run this by the guy who’s doing the back-end on my site, and see if he can troubleshoot the Javascript. Thanks!

    Oh, and here’s the Downloadable TARDIS. It’s not linked properly on the revamp yet.

    Thanks for the TARDIS !!!!

    I’m guessing really, and it may not be a matter of troubleshooting the Javascript. It may be that your Javascript is perfectly fine but Chrome executes it quicker. This is a year old but it should give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Really, I’m not even sure it the Javascript at all. I’m just thinking out loud, really.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • The topic ‘Does adding images to a post contribute to site slowness?’ is closed to new replies.

Tags